As the 2018 box office enters the Martin Luther King holiday weekend, most of its strength still lies in 2017 releases.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE (Columbia/Sony) is on track to win its 4th weekend of release.  Friday’s $6M take was down 44% from last week, and with […]

  The major studios didn’t try to seriously challenge HALLOWEEN (Blumhouse/Miramax/Universal) on its titular weekend, and despite a 69% Friday-to-Friday drop to $10.3M according to preliminary numbers at Deadline, it will easily win its 2nd weekend with around $33M.  At this rate, it could top $175M in the US, which would put it neck-and-neck with […]

  Vulture picked the wrong weekend to predict Universal’s demise. OPENINGS:  SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN (Universal) had a very good $20.3M Friday, and will do better than $50M for the weekend, successfully selling (male) audiences on the revisionist fairy tale as an epic action movie.  All that epic action and spectacular CG came at […]

> BREAKING DAWN PART 1:  Christmas comes but once a year, and for Summit that day is the 24 hours after a Twilight movie opens.  (A little credit to the studio, too, for not fudging the numbers, which would have been easy enough to do since they’re so close, in order to claim a franchise […]

  How much of Friday’s mediocre boxoffice is attributable to a post-Aurora uneasiness about going to multiplexes, how much to competition from the most watched Olympics Opening Ceremonies in history, and how much to simple lack of enthusiasm about the movies on display?  All three probably played a part. THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (Warners) was […]

  OPENINGS:  OBLIVION (Universal) had a fairly good start, with a $13.3M Thursday night/Friday that should give it a $35-38M weekend, depending on word of mouth.  But that’s still lower than the $15.3M earned by GI Joe: Retaliation on its second day of release only 3 weeks ago, and at a probable higher cost (Universal […]

  OPENINGS:  OUT OF THE FURNACE (Relativity) will do nothing to change the reputation of the first weekend in December as a terrible time to open a new movie.  Even in a more robust weekend, the grim quasi-art film, quasi-action thriller would have had a hard time (and the presence of Christian Bale didn’t help […]

  OPENINGS:  TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES (Paramount) may or may not turn a big profit–it carries a $300M pricetag (including worldwide marketing), and could falter quickly now that the fans have shown up–but there’s no question that Paramount marketing did its job in rousing those fans, successfully appealing both to a young audience and to […]